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WD2013 master document is it possible to export as a single .docx file?

I have a 40 chapter book in master document form. It refuses headers and footers, and altered the page margins when I tried to use them. It will not scroll properly, loses and finds pages and graphics leap about at random. It is utterly chaotic.

So as not to lose a month's work I desperately need to save it as a single document. I have tried compiling the individual chapters but the formatting is incorrect and the first section is of course missing - of course, if you add it, it becomes a master document again. 

Question: does anyone know how to achieve this?

As a note, this is a top end workstation with 32GB of ram, solid state memory and 14 processors. This is not a hardware problem. The OS is Win7 64 bit, completely up to date. 

The master document facility has been riven with problems since the earliest versions and Microsoft has shown no inclination to fix it. It is, as you appear to have discovered, best avoided.

Create a new blank document. Set the margins to the same as the original master document, and copy the paragraph styles from the master document to your new document using the Organizer. Copy the text content from the Master document to the new document then import all the sub documents. To facilitate that you could use http://www.gmayor.com/Boiler.htm .

You will probably still have to do some tidying up, but it should be better as a single document. Make sure you have backups!

Graham Mayor (Microsoft Word MVP 2002-2019)
For more Word tips and downloads visit my web site
https://www.gmayor.com/Word_pages.htm

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Thank you for your prompt response. I find it very hard to credit that MS can leave their flagship product holed below the waterline in this way. It is a trap into which a team can enter, but from which they cannot leave. Taken internationally, it must cost the user community hundreds of millions of dollars annually. There is, however, nothing much available if your search for "word master document" and what MS provide seems to apply to Office 2003. I therefore intend to set up a web page,flagging this hidden reef. 

If others have points they would like to include in this page, please append them here. 

// Added later. Importing the text of the master document into a new file crashes word. Intolerable.

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I am using Office 10. My book was also in a Master document and I could not transmit it to the publisher. I expanded the whole book, then highlighted it with Ctrl+A and saved it as a new .docx file. It now is not recognised in it's old form and acts as a normal Word document.   

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Hello, Gerard,

 

Welcome to Microsoft Community and thank you for posting your query.

 

You may select outline view and check if it still shows as one document.

 

Selecting the document (CTRL+A) and saving with a new name does not merge the document to single document.

 

Provide us the exact steps that you performed.

 

Reply with necessary information to check and help you better.

 

Thank you.

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I do not think that Gerard has a problem, rather, he was describing how he had achieved his requirements.
Hope this helps,
Doug Robbins - MVP Office Apps & Services (Word)
dougrobbinsmvp@gmail.com
It's time to replace ‘Diversity, Equity & Inclusion’ with ‘Excellence, Opportunity & Civility’ - V Ramaswamy

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I have more information to share after my previous post. I was trying to transmit my books to my publisher. My net provider would not accept the email transfer of my first book as one file, as they said it was too large. So I emailed the master document and each sub document separately. My publisher still could not open the book. I have a Dropbox account which I rarely use. I found out my publisher's contact person also has Dropbox access. It takes rather a long time for the transmission  but my publisher was then able to open both books. The secret seems to be keeping all the documents together whenever you move them, even within the computer to another hard drive. Graham Mayor's comments are certainly valid. I hope this is of some help.

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Last updated January 14, 2022 Views 628 Applies to: